NRC 'solutions' rebranding quietly dropped without explanation

A plan to “rebrand” the venerable National Research Council and to operate it as CNRCSolutions has been quietly cancelled at the last minute.

The NRC was about to launch the new name at a kickoff ceremony Feb. 11, which also launched its centennial year celebrations.

There were T-shirts and booklets called “This is who we are” to publicize the new brand, intended to focus on aiding business. Helping business became NRC’s main focus under the previous Conservative government, though many scientists have complained this is holding back investigation on the frontiers of science.

But last-minute emails from head office went out asking staff not to distribute these glossy “branding books,” and to drop the new name.

Rebranding cancelled. The centennial kickoff went ahead without it.

Boxes of colourful T-shirts did go out, with the new brand’s symbol of chevrons and a maple leaf — but no name. They clearly show it is someone’s 100th anniversary, but they don’t say whose.

NRC’s media office said it couldn’t find out who dropped the CNRCSolutions name, or why. In particular, it couldn’t say whether Science Minister Kirsty Duncan was involved, and Duncan’s office didn’t respond when asked Wednesday.

An NRC spokesman said some aspects of rebranding are still ongoing. Since 2013, “we’ve been trying to rebrand as Canada’s go-to research and technology organizations,” the spokesman said, and this evolution “is a work in progress … We’re still piloting that and refining the elements as we go through the process.

“It’s all part of trying to provide a positive, consistent client experience.”

Some visual elements of the new brand will go ahead, such as the logo of chevrons that will provide a fresh public face for NRC on signs, buildings and vehicles, the spokesman said.

The proposed initials CNRC stood for Canada’s National Research Council. A tag line said: “Research and technology that mean business”, adopted after market research and testing with focus groups. But the NRC couldn’t use NRC Solutions. That name already belongs to a small plumbing and heating company in England. Also, the initials CNRC work in both French and English.

And it couldn’t make this an official name change because that would require changing the National Research Council Act. Instead, CNRCSolutions was to be a marketing name, the “main market identifier” for dealing with the private sector.

NRC announced the name CNRCSolutions as “standing out from the crowd.” In a note to employees in late November, it said the new name is a “market differentiator that enables us to strengthen the awareness of NRC in order to achieve greater impact for Canada.”

At Western University’s Ivey Business School, June Cotte studies branding. She says it would make sense for NRC to rebrand itself — if its main goal has become consulting for industry, rather than “basic science”, or research that might not have an immediate industrial use.

“That (rebranding) would be a very clear signal of a shift in focus,” she said.

But if NRC later returns to more basic science, “then that rebranding would have been a mistake.”

She said cancelling a rebranding is likely to cause confusion for employees.

“To me that’s a huge signal of confusion at the top. That is a huge signal of a major shifting strategy that is not clear. So if I am an employee in that situation, I don’t know what is happening,” she said.

“Those things don’t get created overnight,” she said. “There’s market research. There are focus groups. Whether you agreed with it or not as an employee, you knew it was coming. And then to have something like that changed at the last minute would definitely signal confusion in strategic direction.”

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